Blood risk mt-1 Read online

  "Hey!"

  Tucker blinked.

  "You all right?" Pete Harris asked, shaking his shoulder gently but insistently. "You okay, friend?"

  "Yeah," Tucker said, not opening his eyes.

  "You sure?"

  "I'm sure."

  Tucker sat up and rubbed his eyes, massaged the back of his neck and tried to decide what had crawled into his mouth and died during his nap in Harris's hotel bed. He flicked his tongue around and didn't find any corpse, decided that he must have swallowed it and that he would have to scrub his teeth well to get rid of the last traces of its demise.

  "Jimmy's here," Harris said. "He's got everything you told him to bring back."

  Tucker looked up, saw Shirillo across the bed, sitting in a chair by the standard-model hotel writing desk. Several paper bags with store names on them rested on the floor near his feet. "What kind of job did your uncle do on the photographs?"

  "Great," Shirillo said. "Wait till you see them."

  "Have them ready for me," Tucker said. He got up and went into the bathroom, closed the door behind him. He felt like hell, stiff and weary, though he had been asleep for only an hour and a half. He looked at his watch. One o'clock in the morning. Make it a two-hour nap. Still and all, he should not feel as bad as this. He splashed water in his face, dried off, found Harris's toothpaste and squeezed a worm of it onto his index finger, then scrubbed his teeth without benefit of a genuine brush. It didn't do much good for the tartar that had built up since this morning, but it freshened his breath and made him feel somewhat more human than he had when he woke up.

  Back in the main room, he found that they had positioned the three chairs at the writing desk and had a stack of 8 x 10 glossies lying there for his inspection. He took the middle chair which they had left for him and picked up the stack of pictures, went through them carefully, selected a dozen and gave the rest to Shirillo. The boy put them in a plain brown envelope and put the envelope out of their way.

  "We'll be ready to go in half an hour," Tucker told them, "if you pay attention the whole way through."

  "You have it all figured out?" Harris asked.

  "Not all of it," Tucker said, aware of Harris's streak of stubbornness. The big man had gone along with everything Tucker ordered up to now, but he would have his limits. It was best to make him think he played an equal role in at least part of the planning. "I'll want your comments and suggestions so we can hammer out the fine points."

  "What if Bachman's dead?" Harris asked.

  "Then we're wasting our time, but we don't lose anything."

  "We could get killed," Harris said.

  "Look at the photographs, please," Tucker said. "They cost me nearly three hundred dollars."

  Harris shrugged and settled back in his chair, quiet. He looked at the photographs, listened to what Tucker had to say, looked as though he wanted to put his Thompson together and caress it for a while, began to make a few suggestions and finally regained his nerve. He was getting old, with twenty-five years in the business; no one blamed him for being a little more on edge than his colleagues. They'd be the same way in two more decades, if they lived that long.

  On the drive out of the city, Shirillo behind the wheel of a stolen Buick that Tucker had picked up only a few blocks from the hotel, Harris in back with his Thompson across his lap, Tucker hungrily devoured two Hershey chocolate bars and watched the occasional headlights of other cars blur by them. He had not eaten since breakfast, but the candy stopped his stomach growling and steadied his hands, which had become slightly palsied. The food did not, however, do anything about the shakes that had hold of his insides, and he resisted an urge to hug himself for warmth.

  Eventually, they pulled off onto the familiar picnic area three quarters of a mile beyond Baglio's private road and stopped behind another car.

  "It's empty," Shirillo said.

  Harris had leaned forward, and he said, "Couple of kids parking."

  Shirillo grinned and shook his head. "If it was that, the windows would be all steamed."

  "What do we do?" Harris asked.

  Wishing he had another Hershey bar, Tucker said, "We sit here and wait, that's all."

  "What if nobody shows up, my friend?"

  "We'll see," Tucker said.

  A minute later two tall, well-dressed black men walked out of the woods behind the picnic area, making casually for the parked car, one of them still zipping up his fly.

  "The call of nature," Shirillo said. "You'd think the state could afford a few comfort stations along a highway like this."

  The black men gave the Buick only a cursory glance, not at all afraid of whom they might encounter in a lonely spot like this, got into their own car, started up and drove away.

  "Okay,' Tucker said, getting out of the car.

  Harris rolled down his window and called to Tucker, "Maybe we ought to hide it better than we planned-in case there's anyone else with a bad bladder problem."

  "You're right," Tucker said.

  Using a flashlight, Tucker inspected the edge of the woods, found a place between the trees where the Buick could squeeze through, motioned to Shirillo. The kid drove the big car into the woods, following Tucker as he cautiously picked out a route that led deeper and deeper into the underbrush. Fifteen minutes later he signaled Shirillo to stop. They were more than a hundred yards from the last picnic table, two hundred from the road, screened by several clumps of thickly grown mountain laurel.

  Getting out of the car, Harris said, "Anybody who's prude enough to walk all this way from the road just to take a piss deserves to be shot in the head."

  Shirillo and Tucker quickly unloaded all the gear from the Buick and put it on the car roof where everyone could get at it. Quickly they undressed and changed into the clothes which Shirillo had purchased earlier in the evening according to the sizes they had given him. Each man wore his own black socks and shoes, dark jeans that fitted loosely enough to be comfortable in almost any circumstance, midnight-blue shirt and dark windbreaker with large pockets and a hood that could be pulled over the head. Each man drew up his hood and fastened it beneath his chin, tied the drawstrings in a double knot to keep them from loosening.

  Harris said, "You sure have rotten taste, Jimmy."

  "Oh?"

  "What's the alligator patch on the windbreakers?"

  Shirillo reached down and fingered the embroidered alligator on his left breast. "I couldn't find any windbreakers without them," he said.

  "I feel like a kid," Harris said.

  Tucker said, "Relax. It could have been worse than an alligator. It might have been a kitten or a canary or something."

  "They had kittens," Shirillo said. "But I ruled those out. They also had elephants and tigers, and I couldn't make up my mind between those and the alligators. If you don't like the alligators, Pete, we'll wait here while you exchange your jacket for another one."

  "Maybe I'd have liked the tiger," Harris said reflectively, letting the idea roll around in his mind while he spoke.

  Tucker said, "What's wrong with elephants?"

  "Oh, elephants," Harris said. "Well, elephants always look a little stupid, don't you think? They certainly aren't ferocious; they don't instill fear in anyone. Baglio saw me coming in an elephant-decorated windbreaker, he might think I was the local Good Humor man or someone selling diaper service, something like that. Besides, I've been a lifelong Democrat, and elephants aren't my insignia."

  "You vote?" Shirillo asked, surprised.

  "Sure, I vote."

  Both Shirillo and Tucker laughed.

  Harris looked perplexed, rubbed at the alligator on his chest and said, "What's wrong with that?"

  "It just seems strange," Tucker explained, "that a wanted criminal is a registered voter."

  "I'm not wanted yet," Harris said. "I was wanted twice before, but I served less than two years both times. I'm a clean citizen now. I feel it's my duty to vote in every election." He looked at them, at what he could se
e of them in the dark. "Don't you two vote?"

  "No," Shirillo said. "I've only been eligible a few years, and I just never got around to it. I don't see what good it does."

  "You?" Harris asked Tucker.

  Tucker said, "Politics never interested me. I know people who spend half their lives worrying about how everything's going to hell in a basket-and it all goes to hell in a basket anyway. I figure I'll survive no matter what nincompoop the public puts in office next."

  "That's just terrible," Harris said, clearly taken aback at their unpatriotic sloth. "It's a good thing neither one of you has any kids. You'd be the kind of parents who'd set rotten examples."

  Tucker and Shirillo laughed again.

  "Come on," Tucker said, prying the lid off a small can of greasepaint, "Let me blacken your face."

  "What for?" Harris asked.

  "For one thing," Tucker said, "it'll make it harder for anyone to see you in the dark. More important, with a hood over your hair and black paint covering your face, it's going to be difficult for Baglio or any of them to make a positive identification of you later. Change a man's facial color, and you alter him almost as thoroughly as if he'd donned a mask. And in the close work we'll be doing tonight, a mask wouldn't be good; it would just get in the way. The greasepaint will conceal you and give you the optimum in mobility, the use of your eyes."

  Grunting unhappily, Harris submitted to this indignity, all the while fingering the outline of the raised green alligator on his breast.

  Ten minutes later they had all been black-faced, the paint put aside with the clothes they had taken off.

  "Now?" Harris asked, plainly expecting yet another indignity.

  "I'll show you the guns," Tucker said.

  "I always use the Thompson," Harris said, lifting it away from the car where he had leaned it.

  "You'll take it along," Tucker agreed. "But you'll use it only if you have to. If at all possible, you'll keep it shoulder-slung and you'll use this." He got out the three Lügers and three silencers, fitted the parts and distributed the weapons. He divided up the clips of ammunition, four each, and supervised the loading.

  "Very nice," Harris said.

  Tucker relaxed as the big man strapped the submachine gun over his shoulder and tested the pistol in his hand. "Keep the ammunition zipped into the right-hand pocket of your windbreaker."

  Harris said, "Holsters?"

  "None," Tucker said.

  "Gun goes in left-hand pocket?"

  "No. Keep the pistol out at all times."

  "Sometimes you need both hands for other things," Harris said.

  "Not tonight, I think. We've got to keep a gun ready. For one thing, getting that damn long silenced barrel out of a holster could be tricky in a pinch. For another, once we're in the house, we could be come upon and shot before we had time to draw. Remember, Baglio keeps at least four armed men in that place, four professionals. And it's their home ground, not ours."

  Shirillo had been unable to learn exactly how many people lived in the Baglio mansion.

  Tucker took out a special belt from which hung a number of tools in thin plastic pouches. He pulled up his windbreaker, buckled the belt around his waist, drew the jacket down again.

  "Shirillo get you that?" Harris asked.

  "Yes."

  "Looks like a nice set."

  "It is," Shirillo said. "I picked each piece myself, spent a couple of weeks honing them where that was necessary, made up the belt and the pouches in my brother's shoe-repair shop."

  Harris scratched his blackened chin, looked at the tips of his fingers, said, "You think we'll have to break in, then?"

  "If all the main doors and unlocked windows look too damn inviting," Tucker said, "we'll make our own entrance."

  Harris nodded.

  "One more thing," Tucker said. He got the khaki tote bag that Paul Norton had given him that afternoon, opened it and took out two compact walkie-talkies. He gave one to Shirillo and took one himself, strapped it to his shoulder and let it hang down against his right biceps. He explained the operation of the radios to Shirillo, insisted that they test them, was finally satisfied that the boy knew what he was doing.

  "I don't get one?" Harris asked.

  "You're already carrying the machine gun," Tucker pointed out. "It may be necessary to split up and be out of each other's sight. I won't, however, have us cut into three separate units. You'll always be with either Jimmy or me, and when we've gone two different ways, we can keep in contact with these. Later on, of course, we'll need them to get in touch with Paul."

  "The copter jockey?" Harris asked.

  "Yes."

  "I'm anxious to meet him."

  "You will before long."

  They gathered up everything that had not been in the Buick when they stole the car-the clothes they had taken off, the attaché case in which the three pistols had lain, the bags the clothes they were now wearing had come in, the black greasepaint, all the sales slips-stuffed everything into the tote bag that the walkie-talkies had been in. The bag was filled to bulging.

  "Back in a jiffy," Tucker said.

  He took a five-minute walk into the woods, much deeper than the car had gone, and, when he felt he was far enough away from the Buick, he heaved the tote bag away into the dark trees. It glanced off a pine trunk, struck something else, landed with a crash in deep greenery and was still. Good enough, then. He went back to the others.

  They took ten minutes to wipe down the Buick, inside and out, until they were sure no one would pick up any prints from it. They had not worried about prints on the stolen Chevy and Dodge that had been wracked up in Baglio's estate the day before, because they knew that Baglio would have those wrecks tucked away and that the police would never have a chance to go over them. This was different, for the Buick would be abandoned here and would eventually be returned to its proper owner. Though Harris's fingerprints were on file, neither Shirillo nor Tucker had been inked into public records yet. Shirillo was too young to have been caught yet; Tucker was simply too careful. Also, Tucker had never been printed in his real identity as the man with the penthouse apartment on Park Avenue, and he most likely never would be; the rich are seldom subjected to that kind of humiliation unless the case against them is as tight as an angry fist, and Tucker intended to be perfectly law-abiding in his real identity. Printed as Tucker, then, his true name and background could be kept a secret, even if he was arrested and had to serve time-although, once out on bail, he could ditch the Tucker name forever and slip back into the Park Avenue world without much worry about being traced and apprehended. As Tucker, however, having his prints on file would severely limit his mobility.

  Tucker shut the last open door of the Buick, using his handkerchief to keep it clean. He put the handkerchief in his pocket and turned to Shirillo. "Time?"

  Shirillo looked at his watch in the pale yellow glow of the flashlight, and he said, "A quarter to three."

  "Plenty of time," Tucker said.

  Around them, the darkness was complete when Shirillo flicked off the light. The thickly criss-crossed boughs of the pines even held back the dim brightness of the stars.

  Tucker said, "Have we forgotten anything?" He knew that they had not, but he wanted to give Pete Harris the feeling that he was helping to guide the operation.

  No one responded.

  Checking the flimsy rubber surgical gloves which they'd all put on when they'd changed clothes, Tucker said, "Let's go, then. We've got a good piece of walking to do, and we can use the flashlight for only about half of it."

  They struck out for Baglio's mansion, while the night closed in around them, and the silenced crickets near the Buick, alone again, took up their chirruping.

  Their line of march paralleled the main highway, though they remained out of sight of it. In a while they came across Baglio's private macadamed lane. Moving back into the woods again, still guided by the flashlight beam, they followed the twisting lane as it cut inland, and they began to
move upward into worn limestone foothills. The trees were thick, as was the brambled underbrush. But deer, smaller animals and the run-off from rainstorms had pressed paths through the weaker vegetation. These natural trails often wandered considerably between two points, but they afforded an easier way than any of the men could have chosen with the jumble of bushes, rocks, gullies and brambles on all sides. To make up for the extra distance they had to cover, they jogged thirty paces for every ten they walked, running as far as they could for three minutes, cutting back to a walk for one, running another three, walking again. Tucker wanted to be within sight of the mansion by three-thirty and inside of it no later than a quarter to four. That still gave them plenty of time before dawn to do everything they would need to do.

  Running through the darkness with the crazily bobbing light picking out the narrow trail ahead of him, Tucker was reminded of the nightmare that he had experienced in Harris's hotel room: the hand descending suddenly out of shadows, moving stealthily through bands of darkness and blue light, stalking the nude Elise.